We had not left quite enough room for a standard garage install and had to get creative with our rear garage door. Here is the video…
The Video
Bells and Whistles
The door was from Lowes and came with the S3 winder so I wasn’t too worried about the torsion spring. I got a side mount garage door opener, specifically a Liftmaster 8500, and was really happy with it.
One interesting side thing: The Liftmaster 8500 had a bunch of extra special features, such as a wireless light, programmable control, etc. but the most interesting thing (to me anyway) was the way the sensors worked. Every other garage door I have owned had a sensor so that if you walked past as it was going down, it would stop and open up. This is the sensor that you always “hop over” if you want to sneak out of the garage as the door is going down. How do you improve on such a basic sensor function? When I first installed it, it didn’t seem to be working, but then I realized that the improvement is simply to wait and see if the obstacle is there for more than a moment. If you just walk past, it doesn’t trip it, no special hop-while-ducking required. You need to interrupt the beam for at least half a second to stop the door from coming down. Pretty minor, but it makes a nice difference 😉